Went out for our first over-nighter in Nepenthe. Megan and Lukas sailed her from North Van to Granville Island for our first shareholder meeting, then anchored her in False Creek for the night. I went home after the meeting to sleep ashore and grab my seachest, and came aboard early Saturday morning. This is UBC passing by on the larboard beam as we stand out to sea under plain sail.
Salty sea-dog numero uno.
Open water ahead. It's about 20 nautical miles of open water across to Galiano Island and took us a good 7 hours each way.
Salty sea-dog numero dos.
Sailing appears to involve early starts, long days, and lots of short naps. Not a bad way to spend a weekend, all things considered.
At the end of the day, we had to anchor off Porlier Pass and wait for slackwater, as the currents through the pass hit many knots and set up some pretty hairy-looking standing waves and stuff. This is the lighthouse on the far side, after we passed through. While setting the anchor earlier, I fully internalised the small-boater's obsession with electrician's tape by, uh, internalising a poky bit of wire that hadn't been taped over with care...
Dinner on the North Galiano public dock.
Sunset over Vancouver Island.
Lukas' family gave him a bottle of champagne to christen the boat with. We thought the tradition of breaking the bottle over the bows rather silly, especially since we weren't launching or even re-naming her. So instead, we drank the champagne, reserving a token whet for the boat :) Note also the yellow tape covering the wires on the forestay turnbuckle, which I punched through my thumb while setting anchor...
Nepethe at dawn. Time and tide wait for no man, and in this case, that meant we needed to be back through Porlier before the ebb set in too fast, which meant a 5am (approximately...) start.
The promised 10-15 knot winds in Georgia Straight failed to materialise, leaving us rolling rather uncomfortably without steerage way. So, since we have left the age of pure sail long long since, we fired up the outboard and motored far more of the passage than we would have liked ideally, but what can you do (well, other than spending all day rolling and pitching and heaving and waiting for the wind to pick up, of course...)
Then, due to our early start, the day was still young, so we detoured up to Bowen Island before returning to North Van. The inflow winds in Howe Sound had set in, so we set the spi pole on the genoa and ran off our northing wing on wing.
On the way home from Bowen, viewing Point Atkins and the lighthouse the way it was meant to be viewed.
Big honkin' cruise boat in the first Narrows. We were trying to stay to the right of the channel, and pass her port to port, but then she turned and started heading straight for us. So we put the helm hard astarboard and obeyed rule 1 (avoid big honkin' boats) over rule 2 (stay to the right in narrow channels). Perhaps rule 2 doesn't apply where boats aren't roughly the same size. I should read up on these things.
Our trip, as taken from Lukas' GPS.